I've just been reading Carter's diaries of the excavation of Tutankhamen's tomb. The objects recovered are staggering! Not only the amount, but the workmanship described sounds wonderful! He goes into great detail describing the pieces surrounding, under and on the mummy, but very little is mentioned concerning the abuse of the king's body. The mummy was cut up to give them more access to the jewelry and amulets. Tut's head wa, in effect, "glued to the golden mask by the solidification of the ungents used. Heated knives were used to try and release it, and when that didn't work, they used hammer and chisel!
The pictures from the latest scan give the impression of a body, although it is almost skeletal, basically complete on a bed of sand. This is a false impression, because the body only looks as if it's complete--actually, it is in many pieces that have been laid on the bed of sand in the correct order. I firmly agree with Zahi Hawass when he says the mummy should be returned to its tomb and not disturbed again.

It's terribly true what you say about the diaries of Carter. He did a wonderful job cataloguing all the different items inside the tomb, but talking about how the mummy was threated it was horrible and without respect! It is clear that the only aim was to rescue even the smallest piece of gold, without taking care of the body. The fact that they put the mummy under the heat of the sun first, then under powerful lamps in order to try to melt the resins, it's already amazing; but then they used everything that was coming up to their sick minds to unglue the mummy from the sarcofagus and its jewellery....yes, Carter did a very good job!

I recently found, in my grandparents' house, a copy of Carter's notes and diaries in two volumes, published in the forties. It has one volume of text, and one fantastic tome of the photographs taken during the excavation process, including several gatefold pages of the interior of the tomb's chambers. It really is a remarkable pair of books. I expect it's worth quite a lot...

Some of Carter's methods seem fairly bizzare in modern light, but I have found the exhaustive section of translations (in the first book), made by Sir. Alan Gardiner himself, hugely interesting. My grandparents say that they'll give me the books for my birthday if I'm lucky. I can't wait!

I don't think that any other excavation team would take Tut's body from his tomb to put it into another place. It is also a tourist reclaim to know that the mummy is there. Apart from that, did you know the last news? The desappeared penis of Tut has appeared, and it was never lost, it was inside de sand on which Tut's body lays.

As Robert Partridge says in his book Faces Of The Pharaohs, even in these days of non-destructive examination of mummies it is probable that the desire to retrieve and display the exceptional objects within the wrappings would have outweighed this policy of preservation in Tutankhamun's case. We could argue that Carter was the 20th century equivalent of ancient robbers who hacked the mummies to pieces in search of valuable treasures, but then again, we should be thankful that it was he who discovered Tutankhamun's tomb and not them.

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